RoP: so how would you do it?
Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2022 2:28 pm
Thinking more about the Amazon abomination, I figured I should do more than complain and at least give a first stab at how I'd do things instead.
So here's some quick thoughts - and I'd love to hear yours!
What I'm assuming for the following is Bezos' $1B budget is still on the table, but the Silmarillion and HoME rights are available.
On the plot:
The one thing the Amazon showrunners got right I think is the need for a common story thread throughout the production. They're I'm convinced utterly incapable - and more importantly uninterested - of executing on that, but the basic idea of presenting the deep history of Middle Earth through the lens of the Second Age I think makes a lot of sense.
Tolkien in his letters talks about the mythic sense of "mountains in the distance" being necessary for the deep sense of fantasy. You're seeing but the nearest edge of the story, and should see deeper history yet just on the edge of the horizon, just out of reach. If you ever make it to those mountains - you need to see yet more beyond, or the illusion is utterly lost.
Therefore the new story "lives in" the Second Age - but we still see flashes of the Trees, of the Silmarils, of Melkor and Angband and Ungoliant. We see Luthien dancing before Beren, and the briefest tantalizing glimpses of Doriath and Gondolin. We see Numenor when it was fresh and new, Belieriand before it was drowned.
I'd have to think deeply about which actual events make it onto screen, but contra Amazon, we absolutely see human lives come and go in an eyeblink while our elves carry the thread of the story from season to season.
On elves:
One of the most stirring elements I got from my first read-through of the Silmarillion was how the elves changed over time. I'd have to dig through the books again to find all the references, but the composite picture I got the last time I did a deep dive was that elves in the early ages are much more "human." There's not the "shimmer" of Gildor Inglorion nor the cryptic "go not to the elves for counsel" - they wear their hearts on their sleeve just as our own Beowulf or Alexander do.
Over the long ages though they become more ethereal, more reserved and withdrawn from the world.
The way I would describe it to the VFX designers is -
"Think of elves as native to the First Age. In the First Age, they look and act much as we do today. This the "human in makeup" level of elf. The further we get from that time, the more "glitchy" they should seem. Just a bit fuzzy, just a bit of reverberation to their voice, as if you're seeing and hearing them from a great distance. In bright daylight you might not notice this effect unless you looked closely - by night it will be harder to miss. Within the elven realms they may seem more normal to you, but only because all the world has taken on this cast. You're no longer fully in the world you knew. The dreamy scenes in Caras Galadhon or the Passing of the Elves that Sam and Frodo see leaving the Shire are rather the spirit of what I'd be looking for, though I'd have to say "like that, but better."
As the signature case - Galadariel should be terrifying to look on. In the same way that the first words from every Biblical angel are some variant of "be not afraid," the very presence of Galadriel on screen should just *drip* with shrouded power - and she is shrouding it for our sake. How to accomplish that in a visual format is beyond my ken, but I'd expect tiny bits of "flutter" in her appearance, just on the edge of perception.... a deep deep deep vibrating bass sound whenever she's present, again so subtle you have to listen for it. If you see her in a long shot, the world oh-so-subtly "bends" around her.
Putting her in armor should look as ridiculously superfluous as taping a tiny plastic toy gun to a Tyrannosaurus.
More "mundane" elves should show the same effect, just to a much lesser degree.
(One incidental thing that falls out from this is that it makes me change my answer to Kramer. The deepfake/CGI required to nudge his features and skintone to finnic is utterly trivial compared to what would be necessary to push any human to elf, so I'd absolutely cast him. )
One last thing - this effect should be less noticeable before the three elven rings are forged, much more noticeable in the third age if we ever "flash forward" there. The elven rings are in some sense holding time at bay, and some sense of discordance with the outside world should increase the further from the time of forging we get.
On dwarves:
Dwarves are a seperate creation and that should be apparent in every interaction. The friendship between Legolas and Gimli is notable because it is virtually unique. Unless the story is in a dwarven setting and only dwarves are present, the dwarves should be tactiturn - even suspicious. Their accents are thick and rich - more Eastern European than Scottish. Every bit of dialogue, every bit of blocking needs to convey a sense of social distance that's missing from all the films. We should hear whispers of Khazad, there should be sidelong glances from dark corners, slightly strange music in the deep soundscape, so forth and so on. A human should never quite know where he stands with a dwarf.
In contrast, when we see dwarves among themselves, deep in their mines - they should seem almost a different people entirely. Joyous, loud, lusty - closer to the PJ dwarves. Crossing the boundary from outsider to insider should be an *event* - and it is an event that the viewer can experience, but is ever closed to virtually all non-dwarven characters (Legolas, etc excepted).
Needless to say, I'd redo the visual aesthetic almost entirely from the PJ approach, but lean heavily towards a Balto-Norse / Eastern European direction with a hint of Semitic.
The most important part of dwarves and elves is that the audience should never be able to lose the impression that they are in the presence of someone different. A half century of D&D and its derivatives have reduced our popular conceptions of dwarves and elves to just humans with funny clothes . They should be recognizable, relatable to us - but they are not only different peoples but different orders of being - and a human audience should never quite be able to forget that.
On production:
Every staff writer, every actor, every set dresser gets a pendant at the start of production. Maybe it has the Professor's name-rune on the front. Maybe it's polished silver, and maybe it's done in the best attempt we humans can make at elvish craftsmanship. On the back is a creed rendered in both Quenya and English. Words to be determimined, but the sense is clear: "I am telling his story, not my own."
What about you all? What would you do if handed the mantle?
So here's some quick thoughts - and I'd love to hear yours!
What I'm assuming for the following is Bezos' $1B budget is still on the table, but the Silmarillion and HoME rights are available.
On the plot:
The one thing the Amazon showrunners got right I think is the need for a common story thread throughout the production. They're I'm convinced utterly incapable - and more importantly uninterested - of executing on that, but the basic idea of presenting the deep history of Middle Earth through the lens of the Second Age I think makes a lot of sense.
Tolkien in his letters talks about the mythic sense of "mountains in the distance" being necessary for the deep sense of fantasy. You're seeing but the nearest edge of the story, and should see deeper history yet just on the edge of the horizon, just out of reach. If you ever make it to those mountains - you need to see yet more beyond, or the illusion is utterly lost.
Therefore the new story "lives in" the Second Age - but we still see flashes of the Trees, of the Silmarils, of Melkor and Angband and Ungoliant. We see Luthien dancing before Beren, and the briefest tantalizing glimpses of Doriath and Gondolin. We see Numenor when it was fresh and new, Belieriand before it was drowned.
I'd have to think deeply about which actual events make it onto screen, but contra Amazon, we absolutely see human lives come and go in an eyeblink while our elves carry the thread of the story from season to season.
On elves:
One of the most stirring elements I got from my first read-through of the Silmarillion was how the elves changed over time. I'd have to dig through the books again to find all the references, but the composite picture I got the last time I did a deep dive was that elves in the early ages are much more "human." There's not the "shimmer" of Gildor Inglorion nor the cryptic "go not to the elves for counsel" - they wear their hearts on their sleeve just as our own Beowulf or Alexander do.
Over the long ages though they become more ethereal, more reserved and withdrawn from the world.
The way I would describe it to the VFX designers is -
"Think of elves as native to the First Age. In the First Age, they look and act much as we do today. This the "human in makeup" level of elf. The further we get from that time, the more "glitchy" they should seem. Just a bit fuzzy, just a bit of reverberation to their voice, as if you're seeing and hearing them from a great distance. In bright daylight you might not notice this effect unless you looked closely - by night it will be harder to miss. Within the elven realms they may seem more normal to you, but only because all the world has taken on this cast. You're no longer fully in the world you knew. The dreamy scenes in Caras Galadhon or the Passing of the Elves that Sam and Frodo see leaving the Shire are rather the spirit of what I'd be looking for, though I'd have to say "like that, but better."
As the signature case - Galadariel should be terrifying to look on. In the same way that the first words from every Biblical angel are some variant of "be not afraid," the very presence of Galadriel on screen should just *drip* with shrouded power - and she is shrouding it for our sake. How to accomplish that in a visual format is beyond my ken, but I'd expect tiny bits of "flutter" in her appearance, just on the edge of perception.... a deep deep deep vibrating bass sound whenever she's present, again so subtle you have to listen for it. If you see her in a long shot, the world oh-so-subtly "bends" around her.
Putting her in armor should look as ridiculously superfluous as taping a tiny plastic toy gun to a Tyrannosaurus.
More "mundane" elves should show the same effect, just to a much lesser degree.
(One incidental thing that falls out from this is that it makes me change my answer to Kramer. The deepfake/CGI required to nudge his features and skintone to finnic is utterly trivial compared to what would be necessary to push any human to elf, so I'd absolutely cast him. )
One last thing - this effect should be less noticeable before the three elven rings are forged, much more noticeable in the third age if we ever "flash forward" there. The elven rings are in some sense holding time at bay, and some sense of discordance with the outside world should increase the further from the time of forging we get.
On dwarves:
Dwarves are a seperate creation and that should be apparent in every interaction. The friendship between Legolas and Gimli is notable because it is virtually unique. Unless the story is in a dwarven setting and only dwarves are present, the dwarves should be tactiturn - even suspicious. Their accents are thick and rich - more Eastern European than Scottish. Every bit of dialogue, every bit of blocking needs to convey a sense of social distance that's missing from all the films. We should hear whispers of Khazad, there should be sidelong glances from dark corners, slightly strange music in the deep soundscape, so forth and so on. A human should never quite know where he stands with a dwarf.
In contrast, when we see dwarves among themselves, deep in their mines - they should seem almost a different people entirely. Joyous, loud, lusty - closer to the PJ dwarves. Crossing the boundary from outsider to insider should be an *event* - and it is an event that the viewer can experience, but is ever closed to virtually all non-dwarven characters (Legolas, etc excepted).
Needless to say, I'd redo the visual aesthetic almost entirely from the PJ approach, but lean heavily towards a Balto-Norse / Eastern European direction with a hint of Semitic.
The most important part of dwarves and elves is that the audience should never be able to lose the impression that they are in the presence of someone different. A half century of D&D and its derivatives have reduced our popular conceptions of dwarves and elves to just humans with funny clothes . They should be recognizable, relatable to us - but they are not only different peoples but different orders of being - and a human audience should never quite be able to forget that.
On production:
Every staff writer, every actor, every set dresser gets a pendant at the start of production. Maybe it has the Professor's name-rune on the front. Maybe it's polished silver, and maybe it's done in the best attempt we humans can make at elvish craftsmanship. On the back is a creed rendered in both Quenya and English. Words to be determimined, but the sense is clear: "I am telling his story, not my own."
What about you all? What would you do if handed the mantle?
